“There’s a lot of Mormonism in my Zen and a lot of Zen in my Mormonism,” Thomas McConkie, MDiv ’25, says. This elegant synthesis, however, took years of meditation and spiritual exploration to articulate.
During his freshman year in college at the University of Utah, McConkie found an advertisement for a meditation retreat stapled onto a telephone pole. Soon afterward, he found himself at the Kanzeon Zen Center in Salt Lake City. There, McConkie met the head teacher, named Genpo Roshi. (“Roshi” being a title for the highest-ranking teacher or spiritual leader in Zen Buddhism.)
Genpo was unique, according to McConkie, in that he went beyond the traditional form of Zen meditative training and incorporated voice dialogue from the Jungian therapeutic tradition. This experience awakened something within McConkie and helped him revisit the suffering that brought him to the Zen Center in the first place. As a teenager, McConkie had left his root tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Zen Buddhism, however, seemed to have opened the possibility for him to heal, moving from estrangement to reconciliation.
In 2007, McConkie met John Kesler, who then became one of his primary teachers. Kesler, himself a faithful Latter-day Saint, also had a powerful experience with Zen Buddhism.
Rather than seeing Zen Buddhism and Mormonism as being at odds with one another, this experience moved Kesler to bring the two worlds together, drawing from the dictum in Mormonism by prophet Joseph Smith to “receive truth, let it come from whence it may.”
McConkie, like his teacher, also began asking how Mormonism intersects with Buddhism, and if there is a greater reality in which they both express in unique ways. These questions eventually led McConkie to form his own synthesis between Mormonism and Zen Buddhism.
He sees, for example, a strong resonance on one hand between Mormon theology’s emphasis on theosis—the idea that humans can participate in the divine nature—with the goal of “oneness” in Zen Buddhism on the other, which aims “to merge one’s whole being with all that is arising.”
McConkie understands Buddhism’s teaching of “no-self” to mean that we do not have a fixed nature. Rather, says McConkie, we are “constantly changing and exchanging with the world around us.”
This unfixed nature, our no-self, can be experienced as sacred. In this sense, we can all participate in the sacred by awakening to our connectedness with all that is.
This synthesis eventually (and unexpectedly) turned into a ministry. In 2011, McConkie returned to the United States, specifically to Utah for a sibling’s wedding, after living in China for several years.
So many people from his “previous life” inquired about Asia and Buddhist practices that McConkie eventually invited them over to his home to meditate.
The first night, he says, was a delight. The meetings continued, then gradually expanded beyond the original group. People began inviting their friends, bringing refreshments, and it spread by word of mouth.
“Eventually we needed to rent a building to fit everybody,” McConkie recalls. “But along the way, something significant happened. It became more than just curiosity about how to do Buddhist practices. People were looking for reliable tools to navigate the changing landscape of their spiritual lives.”
McConkie says an observant student pulled him aside one day and said something that changed his perspective on what he was doing.
“Do you realize that 95 percent of the people who are coming through the door here are wounded Mormons?” McConkie later reflected: “In that moment, I felt a sense of mission. Before, it was just a fun way to spend a Wednesday evening. Now, I had this dawning awareness of a genuine vocation.”
This community is now known as the “Lower Lights School of Wisdom,” a non-profit organization in Salt Lake City.
These transformations in McConkie’s life and way of thinking brought him to Harvard Divinity School in order to research contemplation, human development, and flourishing.
“I was compelled by John’s vision to take insights from the wisdom of Christianity, Buddhism, developmental psychology, and other wisdom traditions,” he says.
Among the many professors and classes at HDS that have deeply moved him, McConkie has found the course “Walking the Inland Sea,” taught by Stephanie Paulsell, Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies, and Terry Tempest Williams, HDS Writer-in-Residence, particularly impactful. The class concerns ecological crisis and how individuals can offer a wholehearted, contemplative response to the world we live in.
“This class embodies the integrity, depth, and wisdom of professors Paulsell and Williams,” McConkie says. “The class has not just asked me to learn something new, but to become something and to engage the world from a new place.”
Some of the fruits of McConkie’s life-long research and time at HDS can be found in his recently published book, At-One-Ment: Embodying the Fullness of Human-Divinity. As the title suggests, McConkie is concerned with how we can all realize “At-One-Ment,” or a “seamless” participation with the world, creation, and one another.
The work does not insist upon rigid and precise definitions, but instead, opens the possibility of engaging the “body, heart, mind, and spirit” through “simple but potent practices.”
McConkie says he does not assume a particular audience, whether Buddhist or Christian, but instead opens himself to anyone in order to, as the book’s description says, “complement their worldview and provide practical, actionable steps toward realizing a greater fullness of all that they are meant to become.”
Ultimately, McConkie’s story and new book are a testament to his firm belief in inclusivity and generosity toward others.
“At a time where more and more worlds are colliding, there’s something beautiful about the skill of deep listening, deep honoring, but also a willingness to stand in my own perspectives; to give myself away completely to another person's world, take off my shoes on their holy ground, but also to not let go of myself, to hold on very deeply to my own perspectives, to what I embody and what I take to be true. It seems like a ripe time for this practice.”
—by Suan Sonna, HDS news correspondent